Guardian of the Everfree
by KaBar41
Summary: Dante Thomas was a normal Marine. He fought like a demon and cursed like a drunken sailor in the Mojave dessert. How will a person trained to kill, survive in a world of prissy Technicolor ponies? The good thing is, he probably won't have to. After finding a secret in the Everfree that will turn the entire world upside down.


Guardian of the Everfree Chapter I The day had started out normal, great in fact. That is if you count getting woken up in the middle of the damn night by fucking mortars launched by fucking sheet heads great. But I digress, thats not the main point in this story. This is just how it begins. I felt as though I had just fallen asleep when the first klaxon went off. We all knew what it meant. I was only eighteen; fresh out of high school. The 2014 class of Trinity High School, Louisville, KY. I had joined the Marines as soon as the school year was over. And then got shipped out to this God forsaken hole in the middle of the desert. Or, as it is more nicely known, Afghanistan. And that is why I find myself here. I; Dante Thomas McClure, in the middle of Nowhere, World. I expected this though. So here I am fighting against a bunch of hiding sheet heads launching explosives at us. Wearing my MARPAT, along with a gasmask. C.O. had told us that now when ever we go into combat to wear them as those fucking sheet heads had been launching chlorine gas. With my M4A1 rattling off rounds like no one's business, along with my M9A1 hanging limply to my side ready to be put into use if need be. My trusty Gerber LMF II ASEK hanging right beside my sidearm. My A.O. thankfully not getting hit by mortar rounds. That is until Murphy decided to fuck me over. I had just been there, firing off round after round, when I heard the whistle. I knew what it was and managed to look up. But I would never be able to get out of the way in time. Time seemed to slow, the mortar round hanging there like it was trying to troll me. And then time sped back up, and the mortar round landed a little ways off to my left hand side. The pain I experienced made me wish I was dead. I managed to slip my St. Michael's necklace out of my shirt and held onto it as I slipped into complete darkness. ... The next thing I heard after my brain started to turn back on was the kind of silence that you only get in a forest. Painfully loud but creepily silent as well. I finally managed to get my eyes open. And saw nothing but lush greenery... Wait a minute, What? I did a double take and indeed I was in a forest, and not in a desert. I did everything I could think of. I hit myself, slapped myself, pinched myself. I felt it all and I was definitely alive. Well there goes my great and normal day. ... After waking up I decided to take stock. One pack loaded with standard issue stuff, check. One M4A1 with ten thirty round mags. check... Wait, what? Ten mags? I had used five of them when I was hit by the mortar. You know what? I don't care. One LMFII ASEK, check. I had pretty much everything. So, what would I do now? Look for civilization. I checked the compass I had and started heading North. After what felt like hours of walking, I came across a river. It was small, but it was definitely a river. I started heading upstream. After what felt like more hours of walking I came upon a house. It was not what I was expecting. The house itself looked like someone had carved out a tree and put a house in it. The tree was still alive. The roof was the greens of the tree. The door looked like it was partitioned in the middle. Sort of like a horse's stable door. The worst part about it? The ungodly amalgamation of animals around it, there were otters standing next to beavers, a bear next to foxes, foxes next to mice, dogs next deers. It looked like someone had thrown me into the Bambi universe. In all honesty, I wanted to puke at the scene in front of me. Then, something came out of the house. I say something because this thing was not a human. It looked like a large dog. Then it looked in my direction, thankfully the bush I was behind hid me well. I could now get a better look at it. This thing definitely had equine features. Trust me, I'm a professional Kentuckian. But despite having equine features, it was so unnatural. Its mane and tail was pink, the body was yellow, and upon it's stifle was a mark. More specifically three pink butterflies. My mind was screaming at me that none of this mattered. What did matter however, was that it was living in a house for God's sake. I turned away and was about to make a get away. Back into the forest, but then I ran into something. After tumbling over, I righted myself and saw another one of them. Damnit. This one was purple with a tricolored mane and tail. This one also had a mark on it's stifle. The mark was a six sided star. That wasn't all though. Oh, no. The Universe decided it was going to bitch slap me again. The bitch slap? This one had a damn horn. A horn. So now I'm confronting a four foot tall unicorn that looks like its angry. And now that I was so close, I made note these thing's faces do not look equine at all. In fact, the faces look humanoid. Back to the point, this unicorn looked angry. Or atleast it was trying to. Honestly, its bug eyes and other features were making it a bit hard to take this thing seriously. It looked angry for about another twenty seconds, until I swear I could see a lightbulb appear above it's head. Honestly, I should've bolted right then and there. But unfortunately I didn't. It shot a beam of light at me which was moving too fast for me to dodge. It hit my chest and in all honestly… I barely felt it. It felt like I had put on a bunch of padding and a baby had lifted a bat that also had padding on it and tried to hit me in the chest. That is how painless it was. I looked to the thing's face and could tell from the expression that that was not what it was supposed to do. So what did I do? I took it as a cue to retaliate. I raised my M4 and fired to left of it. It was far enough that in order for the round to hit it, it would have had to a full canter to the left. But it was close enough to scare the living hell out of it. After that I took off running. … I finally made it far enough into the forest. How did I gauge that? I couldn't hear a horse galloping and my sixth sense for these kinds of things. I looked around, making sure that there weren't more of those horse things. It wasn't late, but I didn't want to get caught with my pants down. I had a plan already. Sleeping on the ground is too dangerous, so I will make a tree my bed for the night. But first I would need a fire. I collected a bunch of dead tree limbs and stones. I arranged the stones in a circle and put the dead tree limbs in the circle I then took the flint that was in my LMFII and took the blade and struck it. Thankfully, it took the first time and pretty soon I would have a nice roaring fire. Feeling hungry, I pulled my pack from my back and pulled out a random MRE. I had enough for a week, if I liked having one square meal a day that is. I opened the MRE, beef with rice, and started munching. While chowing down I reflected the events of the day. Met alien horses: normal, got attacked by said alien horses: normal, retaliated against said alien horses: normal, MRE tasting like shit: not normal. I crawled up into the tree and secured my pack to the branch next to me by snapping the sternum strap and waist strap closed around the branch, my pack now hanging up. I took my safety harness and wrapped it around the limb I was lying on. That way, if I fell, the rig would catch me. I rested my rifle on my lap with the sling wrapped securely around my chest. Ready to be used to defend myself. I then promptly fell asleep. 


End file.
